Grand Princess Review

Cruising Through Covid to Hawaii

Review for Hawaii Cruise on Grand Princess
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grandmaR
10+ Cruises • Age 80s

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Sail Date: Feb 2022
Cabin: Interior

I am an 84 year old woman who has been on 33 cruises, but I had a hip replacement in 2019 and use a mobility scooter or a walker. I can no longer navigate an airport by myself. My companion of choice on this cruise was Phyllis, my 3rd daughter's mother-in-law, who was recently widowed, and is a little younger and a lot fitter than I am. She had been on several cruises - the most recent one was on Princess with her husband who also used a mobility scooter. Although it seems to be fairly unusual for mothers-in-law to travel together, we had a good time.

I booked the cruise in Sept 2020 - to go with my T/As group to the Baja of Mexico out of San Pedro. But since Phyllis had Hawaii on her bucket list, I switched from Mexico to my T/As group cruise to Hawaii. Because of the Pandemic and Hawaii's regulations, the trip was more complicated than any I have ever taken. The rules and required procedures have probably changed but this is the way they were in February 2022

The ship changed itinerary in August 2021. First it changed from a tender port in Maui (I was told because the CDC didn't want us in close proximity in the tenders) and then they shifted to Honolulu as the first port. All the excursions had to be rebooked and the Princess website was not very responsive. Hold times on the phone ran as long as 4 hours.

Cabin Review

Interior

We had an inside handicapped room on deck 14- the Lido deck. It was fairly spacious. Just past the door were three long floor to ceiling closets - two of them for hanging things and one had the safe and shelves. The two bathrobes were on hangers in the closet. There was a desk with a chair. There's a mirror over the desk and then there were three drawers under the desk and the refrigerator. Above the refrigerator are the glasses and ice tongs, and another mirror. The hairdryer is on the wall in the corner there, plus the only two plugs in the room and they are so close together that you can't use one without blocking the other one.

I wanted to plug in my computer and I didn't want to do it by the desk. So the steward got a huge long industrial strength extension cord, and ran it on the floor along the wall, under Phyllis's bed and wrapped the end around the desk lamp on my night table. (So we wouldn't trip on it) I plugged my multi plug into the end of the cord so I can plug in my computer and Phyllis can charge her hearing aids there. I put my other multi-plug into the other plug at the desk to charge the scooter. The night stand light did not have USB plugs.

Phyllis had the bed farthest away from the door, and she had a chair and a little round table on the side of her bed. We both had a night stand which has a lamp firmly attached on the top- apparently hard wired in. There's a phone on a long cord - long enough so it can be on either night stand. Under the top of the night stand is an open shelf and then two rows of drawers. My bed was next to the bathroom. There was a big mirror behind the beds.

The bathroom had a roll in shower with a seat. The sink had three shelves with fiddles on the outer wall, and a mirror. The shower was only cool enough for me on the coldest setting, and the shampoo and soap were in the corner behind me when I am sitting on the seat so it is very difficult to get any soap or shampoo without contorting myself into a pretzel. When Phyllis took a shower, she got a lot of water all over the floor- it sloshed out every time the ship would roll. In order to keep the water in the shower, she stood in the corner and only had the shower on briefly

The door to the room is heavy but not impossible for me to open and get out by myself. It is more difficult for me to get in.

The TV is a big flat screen TV which is twice as long as the shelf it is on. It overhangs the refrigerator and Phyllis has to be careful when she stands up after getting something out of the refrigerator or she will hit her head on the TV.

The TV has an incomprehensible menu - pretty thumbnails but the labels on them are too small for me to read. The screen which shows our location is under the Princess Patter along with the times that things are open. There is a MyDining section in which we should be able to make reservations. But we can't. We should also be able to see the menus and sometimes we can - but sometimes we can't.

The bow camera is under the Live TV section. Live TV has Fox News, NBC, CBS, BBC, Prime, Prime Plus, and two Sports Channels. But like everything else there's no way to find out what is being broadcast on any of the channels without looking at each one. I wanted to watch the Super Bowl and the Olympics and I was unable to do that. The Super Bowl was during embarkation dinner and there was no way to find what times the Olympic sports would be on the TV.

The controller has just On/off, Home, Back, channel and volume buttons and a big button with a ring. Some screens that button will move a cursor around on the screen and some screens it won't.

Port Reviews

Honolulu

Ka Moana Luau - At 4 we climbed on a bus for the ride out to the luau. At the site, they gave us each a shell lei (the celebrities got flower leis) and herded us into rows of tables with white folding chairs. They had noodles, some vegetables, a salad, rice, BBQ chicken, pulled pork, a roll and some pineapple. The dessert was a light fluffy coconut flavored thing with chocolate sauce on it. I got pineapple juice to drink - there was also wine, beer and sodas.

There was a demo of a guy climbing a palm tree to get a coconut And some conch blowing. Then there was a lot of dancing. The hula as done in Hawaii. The hula as done in Tonga. The dancing from New Zealand. A slap dance. A dance twirling gourds on the end of a long string. There were 3 girls and 3 men. Most of them were very buff, but one of the men was called Cousin Jerry and he had a more middle aged spread figure. He also did some of the narrative.

There were also musicians - a lot of drums were involved. Then one of the men did a fire/knives dance. The fire was a baton burning on both ends which he would throw up and catch. I didn't quite see where knives come into it, because I was too far away to see that the fire was on the knives. Phyllis thinks she got some good videos and I got some too. We got back about 9 or 9:30.

Maui

I was very happy to find that the two places I really loved on Maui had been combined in one excursion Best Of Maui: Haleakala Crater & Maui Ocean Center. A long drive through eucyliptus forests and ranch land to the top of the Haleakala volcano with its the barren landscape Silver Sword plants and then lunch at the Maui Ocean Center where whales were breaching off the coast. And then we could see the colorful Hawaiian fish.

Kauai

Opeka Falls, Plantation & Train

First we went the the falls, which were a little underwhelming. But the Plantation was the place where I went from the NCL cruise where they called me a 'special auntie' and we had the train ride and the luau with the fire dancing. That had been the best luau.

There was no luau this time, but the train ride was fun - at the start they threw tortillas to the free range chickens to keep them off the train track. We saw the orchards and fields and there was a newborn calf only about 15 minutes old. This time they stopped and gave us tortillas to feed the horse and donkey. There were pigs to feed too, but we had strict instructions not to hand feed the pigs or we would get bitten. Phyllis got out and fed the pigs. A mother pig with 4 to 6 tiny piglets came over to the train. The little piglets were about the size of a large cat. The piglets were chased back into the grass by the bigger pigs.

Ensenada

Last time I got off the ship and looked around a little - there were some shops at the pier selling silver, OTC drugs and other drugstore stuff and gifts. But this time the shops right by the ship were closed. Not closed because it was Sunday, but vacant - no merchandise on the shelves. Closed because they had no business during covid. There were shuttle buses into town, but I decided it would be more fun just to scooter around. There was a Carnival ship on the other dock. When we went past that, and crossed some bridges, we got to some stores. Mostly what was for sale was souvenir T-shirts and the like and there were places to eat.

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